Today is Earth Day.
It's the 45th anniversary of the event.
Earth Day 2015: Everything You Need to KnowI support protecting the environment, but I don't support BAD science.
Earth Day celebrates 45th anniversary
To commemorate the 45th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22, Earth Day Network (EDN), the non-profit organization founded by organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970, is announcing a series of events and programs to drive forward the movement. More than 1 billion people in 192 countries will participate in Earth Day activities and events, making it the largest civic observance in the world. This Earth Day, EDN calls upon citizens, educators, corporate leaders, governments and global organizations to take action under the banner, It’s our turn to lead
Let’s Talk Climate: Innovative Solutions to Communicating Climate Change, Wednesday, April 8: To kick off Earth Month, EDN and Connect4Climate will present Let’s Talk Climate,an e-discussion communicating effective messages on climate and bridging the gap between knowledge and action.Sign up here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4995176248556082946
Event Registry:, What are you doing on Earth Day? Find out here. Earth Day Network is encouraging cities and organizations worldwide to register their Earth Day events and is providing a network of searchable events for local citizens. Almost 1,000 events are registered so far. www.earthday.org/register
Green Cities: Recognizing that local leaders and elected officials are on the frontlines of tackling environmental problems while also creating green job opportunities, EDN is calling on cities and their leaders to go 100% renewable by 2050. The Green Cities initiative is engaging participation by mayors, city council members and citizens across the US and the world, urging them to take action to create a green economy and reap the benefits of a renewable city. www.earthday.org/greencities
Climate Petition: Scientists warn that climate change could accelerate beyond our control, threatening our survival and everything we love. EDN has joined with other organizations in the promoting the largest climate petition ever, calling on all citizens to keep global temperature under the unacceptably dangerous rise level of 2 degrees centigrade. More on the petition here: www.earthday.org
Climate Education Week: April 18-25 Building on president Obama’s urgent call for a climate literate public as essential to US leadership and a sustainable future, EDN is presenting Climate Education Week, featuring a free online Climate Education Toolkit for K-12 students around the globe, disseminated via EDN’s extensive Educator’s Network. The toolkit includes a week’s worth of curriculum for K-12 students aligned with NGSS and Common Core Standards. www.earthday.org/climateeducationweek
MobilizeU: Launched by EDN in 2012, MoiblizeU is a higher-ed campaign led by concerned college and university students and administrators acting on climate. EDN asks for participation in Climate Communication Forums, engaging a diverse base of students to interact on change issues and solutions in their communities. www.earthday.org/mobilizeu
Faith Based Earth Day: EDN recognizes faith leaders as driving forces behind spiritually based care for our planet. EDN ‘s online and social media tools inspire congregations and are being utilized by faith leaders from Reno, Nevada to Jerusalem, Israel and Fresno, California to Washington, D.C. www.earthday.org/faith
A Billion Acts of Green Since 2010, EDN has steadily built commitments by individuals, organizations, businesses and governments to protect the planet. The campaign inspires and rewards acts that reduce carbon emissions. Over 1 billion acts have been registered. EDN aims to reach 2 billion Acts of Green by December 2015 and deliver this accomplishment at COP21 Paris as evidence that people all over the world are united in calling for a binding global climate agreement. www.earthday.org/takeaction
Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day: Earth Day Network and The Global Poverty Project have joined forces to further the movement to end extreme poverty and solve climate change through Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day, a free event on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, April 18, 2015. Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day will be headlined by No Doubt, Usher, Fall Out Boy, Mary J. Blige, Train, and My Morning Jacket, with special guests Common and D’Banj. The event will be hosted by will.i.am and Soledad O’Brien and will be web streamed live. www.globalcitizen2015earthday.org
The Canopy Project: As part of its mission to protect natural lands and preserve the environment for all people, Earth Day Network developed The Canopy Project. The Canopy Project plants trees that help communities - especially the world's impoverished communities - sustain themselves and their local economies. Trees reverse the impacts of climate change and provide food, energy and income, helping communities to achieve long-term economic and environmental sustainability. For Earth Day 2015, EDN invites everyone to join and help achieve the project’s 10 million tree goal. www.earthday.org/trees
ABOUT EARTH DAY NETWORK:
The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. Growing out of the first Earth Day, Earth Day Network (EDN) works with tens of thousands of partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world. For more information, visit www.earthday.org
There are environmental problems that can be addressed to dramatically improve the quality of life.
I think people should behave responsibly when it comes to the environment. It's an important issue.
I believe that we are stewards of God's creation and must care for the Earth. I believe that we are called to protect the environment and not abuse the gift that it is. However, that goal cannot take precedence over caring for human life.
It's a sad reality, but the environmental movement kills.
Let's talk about Rachel Carson and the impact she has had on the lives of millions of people, causing suffering and death.
Because of Rachel Carson, bad science, and politics decades ago, millions and millions of people needlessly have died of malaria.
Their deaths were preventable - not by the use of mosquito nets, but by the application of DDT.
The banning of DDT is a tragic example of what happens when politics and environmentalism run amok.
I think of Al Gore and his hero, Rachel Carson.
The banning of DDT wasn't a victory. It was a death sentence for millions of people. Literally.
It was bad science. It was bad politics.
From the 1998 PBS Frontline report, "Fooling with Mother Nature":
On the walls of the US vice president's office, you might expect to see framed photos of political giants past and present. Amidst his collection, however, Al Gore cherishes a picture of a biologist from Western Pennsylvania - Rachel Carson, author of "Silent Spring." Why does an unassuming scientist lay claim to this space? "For me personally," says Gore in his introduction to the 1992 edition of her book, "Silent Spring had a profound impact ... Indeed, Rachel Carson was one of the reasons that I became so conscious of the environment and so involved with environmental issues ... Carson has had as much or more effect on me than any, and perhaps than all of them together."
Carson's Silent Spring killed and continues to kill.
So many of Carson's claims have been refuted.
Read a sampling of the debunking of Silent Spring.
Why The Insecticide DDT Should Never Have Been Banned
Killing People - The banning of DDT and radical environmentalists
Malaria Foundation International
The Lies of Rachel Carson
Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!
The latter is a 2002 piece by Marjorie Mazel Hecht. It provides a concise overview of Carson's illegitimate assertions and the consequences of the hysteria that she launched.
The 1972 U.S. ban on DDT is responsible for a genocide 10 times larger than that for which we sent Nazis to the gallows at Nuremberg. It is also responsible for a menticide which has already condemned one entire generation to a dark age of anti-science ignorance, and is now infecting a new one.
The lies and hysteria spread to defend the DDT ban are typical of the irrationalist, anti-science wave which has virtually destroyed rational forms of discourse in our society. If you want to save science—and human lives—the fight to bring back DDT, now being championed by that very electable candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., had better be at the top of your agenda.
Sixty million people have died needlessly of malaria, since the imposition of the 1972 ban on DDT, and hundreds of millions more have suffered from this debilitating disease. The majority of those affected are children. Of the 300 to 500 million new cases of malaria each year, 200 to 300 million are children, and malaria now kills one child every 30 seconds. Ninety percent of the reported cases of malaria are in Africa, and 40 percent of the world’s population, inhabitants of tropical countries, are threatened by the increasing incidence of malaria.
...The campaign to ban DDT got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies... .
Does that sound a bit extreme?
Are you thinking that I'm citing sources that lack credibility?
Do you need a source that you can identify as enlightened, sophisticated, and acceptable to the liberal mindset?
OK.
Read "What the World Needs Now Is DDT."
It's by Tina Rosenberg and was published in The New York Times on April 11, 2004.
It appears that Rachel Carson, Al Gore's inspiration, sparked a movement that cost millions of lives.
What the world needs now is DDT.
Read former Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl's April 21, 2010, e-mail message:
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans paused for a day to celebrate our planet and press for the urgent actions needed to preserve and protect it. As we observe this 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day, we once again reflect on the necessity of a clean and safe environment, celebrate the successes of the last four decades, and consider the long way we still must go to achieve the goals laid out that day.
In Wisconsin, we also stop to remember and honor one of our most prominent citizens.
Earth Day was born out of the passion of Gaylord Nelson. His life was one of service – from the Pacific theater during World War II, to the State House as a State Senator and Governor, and to Washington D.C. where he served Wisconsin as a U.S. Senator for nearly 20 years.
When Gaylord came to Washington, he did so with a mission to bring environmental causes to the forefront of the national debate. He believed that the cause of environmentalism needed as much attention as national defense. For his first years in the Senate, his cause was lonely. In 1966, his bill to ban the pesticide DDT garnered no cosponsors.
Gaylord knew that only with the grassroots support of regular Americans, could the environmental agenda rise to prominence. His idea for Earth Day came from the student teach-ins of the 1960s, but his cause inspired people across boundaries of age, race and location. This year, more than one billion people around the world will come together in the same way they did 40 years ago.
In a speech on that historic day in 1970, Gaylord noted that his goal was not just one of clean air and water, but also “an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.” He told the crowd that America could meet the challenge through our technology. The unanswered question was, he said, “Are we willing?”
That question was answered with a resounding yes. That year saw the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act. In 1972, six years after Gaylord Nelson stood alone on his proposed DDT ban, its use was ended. Later years would bring better protection of drinking water, emissions and efficiency standards for cars, programs to cleanup brownfields sites, and the protection and preservation of our forests, rivers, mountains and oceans.
Despite that progress – and I imagine Gaylord would be the first to note this – we still have much work ahead of us. We must use this anniversary to commit to another environmental decade. The needs of 40 years ago – cleaner water, cleaner air, more protection of our lands – are still here, but the next challenge we must face is climate change.
From lower lake levels, to more invasive species, the consequences of unchecked climate change could be devastating to the people of Wisconsin. Climate change isn’t just a threat, it is also an opportunity. Structured correctly, the solutions to slowing climate change can also speed up our economic recovery.
Remarkable research and development is happening today in Wisconsin – on products for cleaner water, advanced battery technology, and using waste from farms and forests to make advanced biofuels. We have companies developing products to harness the power of the sun to replace traditional interior lighting, retrofitting heavy-duty trucks into hybrids, and manufacturing energy-efficient hot water heaters.
In Congress, legislative work to address climate change is ongoing. With the right mixture of requirements and incentives, we can achieve a policy that reduces our dependence on foreign oil, cuts greenhouse gas emissions, lowers prices at the pump and on the electricity bill, and creates good-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.
We do not have to choose between the environment and the economy; between jobs and solving climate change. Gaylord Nelson made this point over and over again. He once wrote that “all economic activity depends upon the…air, water, soil, forest, minerals, wetlands, rivers, lakes, oceans, wildlife habitats, and scenic beauty.” These, he said, “are the accumulated capital resources of the nation. Take them away and what you have left is a wasteland.”
On this 40th anniversary of Earth Day, while we remember the pioneering sprit of Gaylord Nelson, we must honor his legacy by turning words into action.
Sincerely,
Herb Kohl
Kohl always did seem to be clueless. While Nelson did many worthy deeds, working to ban DDT was certainly not one of them.
I have no problem with Earth Day.
We should take care of the environment, but we're also morally obligated to take care of each other.
Properly using DDT would help us to ease so much suffering and spare so much pain and save so many, many precious lives.
The environmental movement isn't really interested in saving lives. If Earth Day organizers really want to do something significant, they should rally the world to promote the use of DDT.
Show us the faces of death thanks to the environmental movement's misguided agenda.
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